


Swing Life Away

by Christina786



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, One Shot, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-16 11:19:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7266028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Christina786/pseuds/Christina786
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One shot gotten out of hand, based on the Rise Against song "Swing Life Away".<br/>Bucky Barnes got his life back. But where does that leave him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1: Am I Just Bad Luck

**Author's Note:**

> So, I just got back into writing again and thought this would be a great way to get those muscles stretched and flexed after not having done a whole lot these past couple of months. Short one shots it is for now, this one starting off the "project".
> 
> I fully intend to add a few chapters as I go on writing. So, basically this is me doing the free writing thing with a theme. Hopefully every night. Or every other night. Let's see what gives.

“Steve?” Bucky didn’t know if Steve was able to hear him. He was sitting in the living room and Steve had left the room about ten minutes ago to get something to drink from the kitchen, but hadn’t come back yet. He had only just moved in with Steve a couple of days ago, everybody believing it to be best if Bucky had some constant there. “There” being his life. He still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he had been given back his life. Obviously, some people hadn’t liked seeing the charges against him dropped and him being declared a POW, but here he was, allowed to lead a self-determined life again. He got a pension and he had received a ridiculous amount of back pay from the army, so he did not even need to get a job. He didn’t know what to do with this life.  
  
Steve’s head appeared in the kitchen door, Steve holding the phone to his ear, but his hand over the mic.  
“What is it Bucky?”  
Bucky shook his head. “Nothing. Was just wondering where you were.”  
Steve’s gaze became soft again. As it always did, everytime Steve looked at Bucky. “I’ll just be a moment, Buck.”  
  
And once again Bucky wanted to smack him for it. Wow, that sounded ungrateful, even to his own mind. But Steve could be slightly overbearing at times. All Bucky had ever wanted was for Steve to be safe, for Steve to be okay. He had wanted to give Steve a family, when Steve didn’t have one. He had felt needed, he had enjoyed the admiration and adoration Steve had felt for him. He had loved his unconditonal friendship. And here they were, 70 years later, and he was nothing but a burden to Steve, who loved him all the same. Steve still adored him, even though Bucky didn’t deserve adoration. He didn’t want adoration. He didn’t need a pedastal.  
  
Steve had asked him to move in with him to be of help for Bucky, and Bucky knew that a lot of people had pressured Steve into vouching for him. And Steve had done it without batting an eye. Steve had even told Bucky that he was of as much help for him as Steve was for Bucky. They were supposed to help each other out with their “shared life-experience”. Only Bucky did not want to share. He did not want to talk about the last decades. He did not want to be reminded of the war. He was tired, so damn tired of everything. And he wasn’t sure if he could ever be the home Steve hoped he could be, or if he’d just bring bad luck into his life. He didn’t even know if living together drove them further apart. He wanted to have a connection with Steve, he wanted to be his family. He just didn’t know if he was up to the task quite yet.


	2. Chapter 2: I'll show you mine, if you show me yours first

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got so much more depressing than I intended...

Steve came back from the kitchen and sank down into the couch beside Bucky. Close enough to be a reassuring presence, but definitely giving Bucky his space. Those few days they had been spending together had been awkward and neither seemed to know how to approach the other, how to be with the other, how to talk to the other.  
  
Steve let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bucky… Buck. I want to be your friend, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to talk to you. There’s so much I want to tell you, but I don’t know how.”  
  
Bucky looked at Steve, who stared up at the ceiling, his head resting on the back of the couch. His cheeks were slightly red. He was ashamed. For the first time in days, Bucky smiled.  
“Good to know it’s not just me.”  
  
He still looked at Steve. Felt like he was staring. Steve wouldn’t turn his head. Something on the ceiling had him utterly fascinated.  
“Steve?” he suddenly whispered and his friend’s head instantly turned around to face him, “We have some catching up to do, don’t we? We are… we are not the same Bucky and Steve we were back in Brooklyn.”  
  
Steve gave a dry laugh. “Sometimes I don’t even remember who that little guy was. The kid that wanted to serve his country and save the world. God, we had no idea.” He buried his face in his hands. “Bucky, this is not what I signed up for. I thought we’d win the war and go home. I wanted to grow old with you in Brooklyn, in the 20th century. Instead I got frozen and then thawed and I don’t know where to go, what to do, and on top of everything else, everybody’s making these grandpa jokes, and I’m laughing along, when sometimes all I wanna do is go home to a place I understand, a place where my friends are still alive, a place that doesn’t exist anymore. I never wanted to learn about the internet or smart phones, I never wanted the 21st century.”  
  
Bucky gave a curt nod. “Neither did I. Sign up for it, I mean. But this is what we got. And now we gotta deal with it. The internet is pretty cool, though.”  
“I don’t wanna fight anymore, Bucky. I’m sick of having to fight for everything. Why can’t anything ever be easy? I thought, once I got you back, everything would make sense again. But…” he looked around them, “It’s still the same. I still don’t know what to do.”  
  
Bucky sighed. “Steve. Stevie. That’s because I am not the answer to your problems. I am not your home, as much as I want to be. I can’t be your home. I am just a man, and a broken one at that. All that’s left is my survival instinct and if I could, I would have kicked that out years ago, when the memories came back.”  
  
Steve looked at Bucky and almost chuckled. “All that’s left of me is my sense of responsibility. Those past couple of years, I spent looking for you. When you went to Wakanda, I tried to make the world a safer place for you. For us. For people like Wanda and Peter. And now that everything seems to be well and at peace, I don’t know what to do. I’m always waiting for something new to come along. A new villain, a new war. Someone once told me that I needed the war, because what is a soldier without a war… What have we done before the war, Bucky? Who was I before they made me Captain America?”  
  
“You were the most compassionate, responsible, and brave guy I knew. You had this strong sense of what was wrong and what was right. You drew”, Bucky suddenly recalled, “Whenever you didn’t complain about the injustice in the world, whenever the apartment wasn’t filled with your voice going on and on about what’s wrong with society, how we needed feminism, why the nazis are bad, I’d find you bent over a drawing pad. Do you still draw?” Bucky looked up to see Steve’s eyes widen in wonder.  
“I haven’t drawn since they pulled me out of the ice. I didn’t…I never felt the urge. And anyway, my favorite motive had been missing.” He looked up at Bucky through his lashes and for a moment, Bucky felt his cheeks heat up.  
  
He laughed. “Shut up, Rogers, you wouldn’t have wanted to draw me. Not at that time. I was nothing but a tool. A thing”, his mood suddenly tipped, he felt anxious, “I wasn’t me, I wasn’t even human. Some nights I can still feel the detachment. My emotions not quite being on board with what’s happening around me. They got a lot of things fixed in Wakanda, but somedays I just feel empty inside. Like a deep pit, swallowing everything I feel.”  
  
“You are not a broken puppet, Bucky. You just need some help…”  
  
“I don’t need help! And I don’t want you to put too much hope in me. Don’t try to fix me, when I don’t even know if I can be fixed. I can’t be the Bucky you knew anymore. I will never be him again. How could I? I don’t even know yet if you can ever trust me 100% again. I don’t know what to do with myself, where to go from here…I…I got all this life and I don’t know how to live it.”  
  
“James Buchanan Barnes, this is not about me expecting you to be anyone or anything for me. You were there for me, when I needed help, even though I had to bite back my pride to let you help me. This time around, you will have to bite back yours. It’s what friends do, they help each other.”  
“Are we still friends?” Bucky asked silently. “I mean, if we lost ourselves, how did we not lose one another?”  
Steve was looking for an answer. Bucky could see it. He also knew that his question had been unfair. Necessary, but unfair.  
  
Then Steve shrugged. “I still love you. Even though I am struggling to keep up with everything that’s changed, I still love you like I did back then. And that’s why I’m willing to take a chance.”  
Bucky wanted to scream at Steve that he was not worth it, but something in him stirred. “I do, too. I mean, obviously”, he tried to tone it down with a laugh, “even after my brain got put into a mixer, I still recognised you.”  
Steve looked at his feet. “Please don’t talk about yourself like that, Buck.”  
“So, where does this leave us?” Bucky asked, trying to not think about Steve’s plea too much.  
“I show you mine, you show me yours. The scars, the skeletons in the closet, the pain…”  
Bucky shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to remember.”  
“So, I’ll go first. Because I need to talk about it.”


	3. Swing Away The Bad Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more talking. I feel like this is so boring to read, but it's fun to write. figure out what they'd talk about. I don't know. it's still more an experiment on creative writing.

It took them 34 days of talking, for Steve to finally let go of his survivor’s guilt. If that was even the appropriate term, as Bucky was sitting in front of him. Only “one arm short”, as Bucky liked to add whenever the mood threatened to tip to the dark side.  
  
It would make Steve look at him sternly, indignantly, only for him to shake his head with a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You are so inappropriate”, he chuckled one evening when they were sitting on one of those Hollywood swings on their porch. It had been a birthday gift from Nat, who had remembered how Steve once said he’d love to have one of those. Steve didn’t recall saying that, but if Nat said so, it was probably true. Also, he really liked the thing, as mundane as it might seem.  
  
“It’s my arm and I get to joke about it.” Bucky replied.  
  
“Well, not anymore, it isn’t. Isn’t that the whole point?”  
  
Bucky stared at him, mouth agape, but a smile playing around his eyes, all mock indignation. “You did not! Did you just make an inappropriate joke about me missing an arm? Did America’s symbol of virtue really just make fun of a poor old veteran?”  
  
“Well, when he’s a dickhead, he deserves to be treated like one. Oh, and just a little reminder, I’m a veteran as well. No longer serving in the military.”  
  
“Dickhead?!?” Bucky burst into laughter. “Where in the world did you pick up that word?”  
  
“Three year-old at the pharmacy called his mother dickhead.”  
  
Bucky shook his head. “I will never get used to kids these days. Where did the respect go? I mean, he called his mother dickhead? What kind of child does that? And besides, it doesn’t even make sense to call her dickhead.”  
  
Steve snorted. “Well, he got away with it. And he didn’t seem too hung up on semantics either.”  
  
“Remember when your ma actually washed your mouth out with soap, because you called me a jerk?” Bucky laughed.  
  
“See? That’s why I’m a well-behaved kid these days.”  
  
“Well-behaved, my ass. You swear more than DumDum in his prime. How America hasn’t found out yet that its Captain is the world’s second biggest pottymouth, is a mystery to me.”  
  
“I am second to none. Who is this person that supposedly swears more than me?”  
  
Bucky grinned. “I can swear in 27 different languages, pal. There’s not much to like about the programming, but understanding a whole bunch of languages is definitely cool.”  
  
“I thought they had…taken all the programming and kind of..deleted it in Wakanda?” Steve asked, carefully avoiding the word ‘wiped’.  
  
Bucky got up in one fluent motion and looked down at Steve. “I’m going to get coffee, you want some?”  
  
Steve swallowed. Then nodded. “Yeah, thanks.” He said silently when Bucky had left the porch. Bucky still wouldn’t talk. Steve had thought about calling Sam every now and then, but then not gone through with it, because he needed to respect Bucky’s choice not to talk. Just because talking helped him, didn’t mean it would help Bucky. In addition to that, he did not get the dynamic between Bucky and Sam. The two seemed to dislike each other deeply, but they would never let anything happen to the other. But maybe it was their form of showing affection.  
  
To his surprise, Bucky came back only minutes later with two cups of coffee.  
  
“I thought you’d fled the scene because I got too pushy.” Steve said. Honestly. There was no need for games or agendas with Bucky. One thing he still loved about his presence.  
  
“No. This is what we do, isn’t it? We sit on the porch and talk about the bad stuff. We swing and we talk and drink coffee. It’s our thing, we swing away the bad stuff.”  
  
“But you said you didn’t want to talk. So you don’t have to.”  
  
Bucky sighed, then he smiled crookedly. “There are things I can’t even bear thinking about for too long without getting sick. But there are other things, some things I can talk about. Wakanda was not a bad experience per se. Just…not all that pleasant. They got most of the… I don’t really know how to explain. They told me something about computers, like, there is some software in my head that they can easily deinstall, but other things are part of the operating system and they are too deeply rooted to extract. The languages are too deeply entwined with my personality and language ability. And they did not have any good reason to delete those, so they just let them be.”  
  
Steve looked at him like he was talking utter nonsense. “Buck, I know how to use a computer, but you are the nerd. That…it doesn’t really help me understand.”  
  
Bucky furrowed his eyebrows. Then he lit up. “Remember that Samsung phone you got? The one with the unnecessary apps that always updated stuff it wasn’t suppsed to and you couldn’t deinstall all the apps, because a few were part of the app package that came with the phone?”  
  
Steve nodded. “Yeah, I do.”  
  
“It’s exactly like that. Some of the…apps Hydra installed are part of the package and hard to get rid of. You can disable them if you take the time. But it isn’t really necessary and you don’t want to take that much time to try and figure out how to get rid of something that doesn’t hurt otherwise.”  
  
Steve smiled fondly. “You are still a nerd. It’s great to see.”  
  
They fell silent for a while.  
  
“There’s still so much of you left. And I start to figure out who that new you is. And…he’s not bad at all. I like him. A lot. The person you’re becoming? He’s a great guy.”  
  
Bucky chuckled. “Thanks, I guess. You’re not half bad, either.”  
  
Steve shook his head. “I still feel like I’ve lost myself somewhere along the road. I never wanted to kill anybody, I never wanted to intentionally harm anyone. But then you fell and I… I lost it. No, I lost myself, a piece of my soul. All I could think about was getting back at Hydra for taking you from me. And till this day… I’ve never been hateful before, but there were people I wished dead. I killed Hydra-agents and didn’t even spare a thought if they had a wife and children at home. This is not how my mother raised me.”  
  
“Steve, your mother never went to war.”  
  
“But I promised Erskine. ‘Not a soldier, but a good man’. I’ve been far too good a soldier at times to be a good man. When I woke up, I just joined SHIELD and never even questioned them, until it became too obvious that something was foul. I did what I was told, thinking it was for the greater good and I was happy. I lied to Tony to keep you safe and to not having to admit to myself what you..what they made you do. The truth, told by a friend, would have been unpleasant, but Tony would not have had to feel betrayed by me. But I took the easier way, or so I thought. Tony would have figured it out at one point, but still. I told myself we could all be friends if he just didn’t know about Howard and his mother.”  
  
“But do you still do what you believe in your heart to be right? I mean, not signing the accords was a good thing. Wasn’t it? Not just because of me, but because the combined power of the Avengers in one hand…doesn’t sound like a good idea when politics and agendas are involved. Steve, you are a good man. Still one of the best I know. You are trying so hard to do the good thing that nothing is ever good enough. And hey, you going on a rampage like that is understandable. I mean, the Red Skull killed your boyfriend.”  
  
“Boyfriend?”  
  
“Love of your life? Childhood crush? Object of your romantic affection?”  
  
“All true. All very true. I just never… you never referred to yourself as my boyfriend before.”  
  
“Because it was illegal when I could have, and then I didn’t even know what a boyfriend was for a few decades, then I didn’t really remember, wasn’t sure, what was real, what was wrong, which memories were memories and which were hallucinations. Then there were a couple weeks I was too busy running from the whole world, then I was an icycle again, and then I did not know how you would react if I called you that. This is really the first time I can ever really appreciate the thought and say it out loud.”  
  
“You hallucinated? They took your memories and still you hallucinated? About me?” Steve asked incredulously.  
  
“You were the one thing I held on to. Not my name, not my family. Just your face. Even when I had nothing else, I had you.”  
  
They were silent for a moment. Then Steve hung his head, chuckled, and ran a hand through his hair. He looked up at Bucky and tried to smile.  
  
“I actually told Sam the exact same thing about you. I was so lonely when you were gone, I find it hard to let people in these days. I’m good with the superficial stuff, but I suck at making a deeper connection. Form a real friendship. You know? I have been getting along with Natasha, I spent some time with Banner, and Sharon, she is great, and I like them, I do, but it never even comes close to the thing we had with the Howling Commandos and Peggy. ‘Friend’ meant something else back in the day. Nowadays, you go and tell everybody they’re your friend, even though you might not even know their name.”  
  
Bucky grinned. “It’s because we were awesome. But all jokes aside, don’t you have a single friend? Someone you trust?” He stared out into the slowly darkening garden in front of the porch. Night was creeping in.  
  
“Okay, I got Sam. But Sam was easy enough to let in, as he just bashed in the doors he found closed. You know, I never even had to ask him to help me look for you. He just decided I needed his help.”  
  
“Yeah, he can be annoying like that.” Bucky agreed. Then he turned to Steve. “But I’m happy you got him. Wouldn’t want him on an opposing team. And it is good to know that you were not alone in this mess. And Sam is a good guy.”  
  
“One of the best. We make a good team, Sam and I. The three of us could be amazing if the two of you stopped bickering for a mission or two.”  
  
“We’re bonding”, Bucky laughed. “That’s how they call it these days. We respect each other, but we still have to figure out how to adjust to one another. Thus the slight power struggle. Look at it as sibling rivalry. We’re establishing dominance.”  
  
“Sometimes I feel like one of you is going to start banging his chest or marking his territory.”  
  
“You mean pee on you? That’s gross Steve. And it might shock you, but rationally we are aware of the importance of the other and their role on the team. Emotionally, both of us want to be your best friend. And romantically, Sam is as straight as Washington Monument.”  
  
Steve looked at Bucky. “It’s getting cold out here.”  
  
“You wanna go inside? Have cup of tea?”  
  
“Please.”


	4. I won't cross these streets until you hold my hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky starts confronting his traumata

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is starting to become a monster. This was supposed to be a short, rather fluffy just a little angsty one-shot. And here we are.

The rattle of the subway almost made him jump. It was loud, an intruder in the quiet of his own thoughts. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the missing weight of his arm making him slightly uncomfortable, because he had been so used to balance out the added weight on his left. It left him swaying for a moment, until his head caught up with his movements. He looked around if anyone paid any attention to him, training getting the better of him, he did not want anybody to see this momentary weakness, give them a point to attack. But there were only a few people on the platform, other than on Memorial Day when the station was packed. The station smelled slightly of earth and dirt. It seemed gray on this late September day, the trees not yet turning colourful and bright, but the sky covered in clouds. There were only a handful of tourists, a mother with her child on her hand, a small boy who was missing his two front teeth in a dress shirt and pants. The blonde woman wore a black dress and hat. The boy looked at him and grinned a toothless grin, he had managed to untuck his shirt from his pants, his sandy brown hair waving slightly in the wind of the incoming train. His mother had a stern expression on her face, an expression Bucky had seen once too often. It was the face of someone who had suffered a loss, but didn’t want anyone to notice just how broken they were inside, how much they missed the other, how much they might have needed someone to just hold them for a while. Instead she put on a brave face for her son. When she looked down at him, though, he could see the warmth flow freely into her features, making her years younger. Her blue eyes started to smile as well. She would be okay. He knew that as well. He had seen people recover from the loss of friends and family. Then there was a Japanese couple with a camera, exposing them as tourists. They were in their sixties, he guessed, the man dressed in a grey t-shirt with beige cargopants and a beige cargovest over his t-shirt. He also wore dark gray socks in his darkbrown sandals. His wife wore beige capri pants and a white short-sleeved blouse with a cherry print. Both wore straw hats and sunglasses and talked in low but excited voices. The train came to a screeching halt. Bucky watched the couple and the boy with his mother board the train, a black haired teenager getting out of the door closest to him. She came straight toward him, didn’t slow down, didn’t correct her course, just to bump into his armless shoulder and leave him looking after her slim figure in skinny jeans, a white top, and combat boots, before hesitantly getting on the train. The seats were a little shabby, worn at the edges, just like him. Threadbare fabric felt strange against his fingertips as he lifted a newspaper off the seat he wanted to sit down on. He almost chuckled to himself when he thought that he was actually allowed to sit down in the seats for disabled and elderly. People could see that he was disabled, no need to explain. People couldn’t see that he also belonged in said group of elderly. Still, he pronouncedly sat down far away from the doors, a conscious effort to not be on the lookout for an escape route. The dimly lighted Arlington Cemetery station faded from his view and there was landscape flying by. Then a subway tunnel. He thought about the people he had just visited. Once his best friends, now just white markers on the seemingly neverending green of Arlington. Everytime he visited there, he felt like the vast expanse of the cemetery and the many graves that this vastness spoke for was way too much. He felt like screaming. All those white headstones had once been people who had either been caught up in a war against their will or thought they were doing what was best for their country, families, friends, maybe even themselves. They all had died in the mangling jaws of the war machinery. Bucky couldn’t stand it. He had been made into a hero of war he didn’t feel he was. He did not want to be a role model for some kid. He did not want to be the reason a mother had to wave goodbye to her son who wanted to be great as Bucky Barnes. He did not want to be the reason a mother had to tell her toothgapped son that his father had died serving his country like Bucky Barnes ones had. He had once been convinced that he was doing the right thing. And taking out Hydra had definitely been the right thing to do. But he had seen enough war for a lifetime. He had seen enough scared boys on the frontlines. He had said goodbye to too many friends. And everytime he visited Arligton, everytime he visited Dugan, Jones, and Morita, he was happy they had died of age and not a bullet between the eyes. Falsworth was buried in Britain, Dernier in France, still it felt like they were somehow here as well. He and Steve were the only original Howling Commandos still alive. And he understood what Steve had said about establishing deeper connections with other people. It was hard to find a connection like their’s in other people. It had been their unique situation; they had had to trust each other with their lives, they knew the others’ dirtiest secrets, their deepest fears, their biggest dreams, what they intended to do after the war, and most of all, they had become close friends, because you can only almost die together so many times before you know how much you appreciate a stupid joke by Dugan, Morita’s desperate shake of his head, Dernier saying “That’s it, this time we’re going to die”, Jones going “but we’re going to take as many of them with us as possible”, Falsworth saying it’s a competition, yourself chiming in that there’s no one to win if they’re all dead, and Steve mumbling something encouraging, before someone comes up with a reckless plan to save their asses, before you become brothers. He still remembered the talks by the campfire about what they’d do after the war. DumDum had joked about opening a “real” Italian restaurant, because of the lousy food they had gotten in Italy. But Bucky had read that he had stayed with the military, went to the CIA, and later held a position in SHIELD. Jones always said, he’d love to just be a simple auto mechanic, but he too had stayed in the military. Actually, he spent most of his active days chasing important members of the Nazi party. He, too, was too valuable for SHIELD to let go. Falsworth just wanted to get back to his family and retire, having enough money to never have to work another day in his life, but he passed away soon after the end of the war due to heart failure. Morita had said, he had wanted to help people when he got back to the States. He had joined the fire department in a midwestern small town and died only a couple of years before Steve had been found. He didn’t know what exactly he wanted to do, but he wanted it to be something worthwhile. Dernier, who had been a French resistance fighter when they had met in Europe, wanted to see the US, the country his fellow Commandos were talking about. He had done just that. And more: he’d moved to the US as an assistant to the French Ambassador at one point. Still, he was buried in Europe, in his free homecountry.  
  
But what had it been he and Steve had said they’d wanted to do after the war? He tried to remember now. He had tried hard to not think of the times with the Commandos too much, had tried to tune out the things that hurt in hindsight, because it made him feel their loss just so much more, when he knew that they had already lived their lives whereas he and Steve had been suspended in time. Today had been the first time he had let his mind go there and even now on the subway, he still couldn’t keep the tears from falling. He felt the gaze of the small boy on him and threw him a sad smile. The boy smiled back. His mother looked down at the child and followed his glance over to Bucky. She tried with an encouraging smile, but it faltered a little when she saw his arm. He pressed his lips together and took a deep breath of the stale subway air breathed by too many people all day long. He stared ahead of him, but now there was nothing but darkness outside the window. He saw his own reflection. A guy at the end of his twenties, maybe early thirties. The shadow of a shave too long ago on his cheeks and chin. His long dark hair looked wild and windswept. His eyes were sunken in and dark-rimmed. And there were tears slowly crawling down his face. His arm was missing. He felt the onset of panic. Still, he changed onto the red line after staring into the dark behind the window for five stops. He made it to Union Station. Got off the subway and came out beside the station. Was shouted at by different street vendors selling food. Looked around. Tried to make sense of what was going on. Why was that guy shouting at him? Oh, he wanted to sell him something. How could he get out of that situation? A loud sound ringing in his ears, like the sound of a riffle being fired. Cold crawling under his skin. Why was there a guy asking him for money sitting on the floor? Where was he? His chest felt restricted. He threw himself through the doors into the side wing of the station’s front hall. Looked up to the ceiling. Was passed by a crowd of colours chatting animatedly. The colours were people, he noticed, but there were too many of them. Too much of them. Too much noise. Too many people looking into his face. Seeing him. Staring at his arm. Or rather his missing arm. He found himself a quiet corner of the hall by one of the souvenir stalls that was deserted right now and tried to steady his breathing. He wrote Steve a message.  
  
_Come get me? Union Station. Too many people._  
  
Steve wrote three words. _Be right there._  
  
Bucky’s chest eased up, but he could still feel the people watching him. The girl from the souvenir stand got back and he walked toward the front doors, staring up at the high ceiling. The statues. Then he looked around again. People nearly running into him, changing their direction in the last moment. And then he saw Steve’s familiar silhouette coming through one of the front doors. His shoulders hunched as always when he went out in public in private. Somehow Steve tried to be 5 feet and a handful in spite of being more than 6 feet tall. He didn’t want to bother people with his height. Just like Bucky he liked to be invisible in a crowd. Except that neither of them fit in here. Bucky’s missing arm made people stare and people weren’t fooled by Steve’s attempts to optically shrink himself. Steve reached him with a few strides of his long legs and hugged Bucky tight. He didn’t speak and Bucky was relieved he didn’t have to talk. It had been too much today. Wordlessly Steve made to move toward the doors, but Bucky’s feet wouldn’t move. Bucky felt the cold crawling through his limbs again as soon as Steve had let go of him. Steve looked at him quizzically. Bucky tried to make himself say something, but all he could do was shake his head.  
  
Then. “They’re all dead, Steve.” His voice cracked and he needed a moment to go on: “They all lived their lives and here we are, alive, aged only a few years when they had the time to grow old. Those friends we could have grown old with, they grew old without us. They never even knew we weren’t dead. They probably mourned our deaths like we are mourning theirs.”  
  
A small nod. His jaw going tense. His gaze sinking. His eyes faintly wet. That was what Steve had meant. For a moment, they stood facing each other looking down onto the marble floor. Then Steve silently extended his hand and Bucky slid his into Steve’s palm. They looked at their hands when Steve closed his fingers tightly around Bucky’s. Bucky took a deep breath. Shifting his hand and entangling their fingers. This was new for them. They had never held hands. Not like this. Bucky looked up into Steve’s eyes to find the same sense of wonder in them.  
  
“But”, Steve croaked a little, sounding like he was about to cry, “we have each other. And isn’t that against all odds and amazing?”  
  
He led Bucky out of the hall and as they looked down to the Capitol, Bucky tugged at Steve’s hand. “Strange to have you on my right again.”  
  
“Some things never change, Buck.”  
“Let’s hope they don’t.”


	5. Places We Will Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They decide what to do with the second chance life granted them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the happy ending I had in mind all along. It just took me longer to get there than expected. This was supposed to be 1-2 pages... Thanks to everyone who bothered reading this far (and maybe even reads on until the end)!

A few days later, they sat on the porch again, swinging in the light evening breeze. It was probably one of the last warm days of the year, maybe their last opportunity to sit out here and swing away with their thoughts.  
  
“So, remember when we couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do after the war?” Bucky asked Steve after a while. They had just sat there in comfortable silence, sipping on hot cocoa.  
  
Steve looked at him and nodded. “Yes, I do. Did you figure it out?”  
  
Bucky smiled. It was relieving how – after the initial pain – he had found it in him to smile about the memories of days past with their old friends. “Yes. Yes, I remembered. We talked about the future all the time with the Howlies, right?”  
  
Steve scrunched his face. “We did?” He obviously tried to remember. Then his face lit up. “Yes…yes, we did, back when we were in France. We talked about what we were going to do in the future. How do you remember and I don’t?”  
  
Bucky shrugged. “I still remember you smiling at me across the campfire, when I told you all that I wanted to go travel and see the world with the money I had earned. I had never earned that much money before and I wanted to see the places we’d seen in the light of the war, just without the war. I wanted to know what that country was like, the country we were fighting for. I wanted to taste foreign food and listen to strange languages, admiring the nature of all those countries whose names I couldn’t even pronounce.”  
  
Steve smiled fondly. “I just listened to you, you sounded so excited, it was…adorable.”  
  
“Steve! I’m a grown man, you can’t call me adorable.” Bucky laughed.  
  
“I just did, though”, he still smiled. Then he folded his hands, looked at them, took a deep breath. “Do you…do you remember what I said I wanted to do?” He looked like he tried to remember and hard, but couldn’t find the memory anywhere.  
  
Bucky frowned. He tried to remember, but couldn’t really remember anything but Steve smiling at him. He looked around in the memory. DumDum sitting next to Steve following his gaze. Morita chuckling when Dernier asked Steve, what he wanted to do, and Steve didn’t notice right away. Then Jones laughing and DumDum elbowing Steve in the ribs.  
  
“Guess you’re going everywhere Barnes goes, right?” He joked. At which Steve had flustered, thrown out his chest and scoffed.  
  
“No…What makes you say that?”  
  
Falsworth had shaken his head. “Because the two of you come as a twin set. It’s rather hard to picture one without the other.”  
  
“He’s right. You seem joined at the hip whenever we don’t have a mission. I’ve rarely seen a friendship run that deep.” Jones agreed.  
  
Steve smiled. “Probably. Going with Bucky doesn’t sound half bad. I could get back into painting, sketch the landscapes we come through, the towns, cities…”  
  
“More of Bucky in front of various backgrounds.” Morita added. They all laughed. Even Steve and Bucky. The Howling Commandos had accepted their friendship, whatever it was with every little thing that came with it. They didn’t ask questions and they didn’t judge. They just poked fun at them. All the time. Bucky smiled, lost in happy memories.  
  
“You said you wanted to come with me.” He told present-day Steve.  
  
Steve laughed a little. “Oh, I remember. That was when Dernier said something along the lines of ‘because whereever Barnes goes, his Golden Retriever follows’. They never let us see the end of it after that night.”  
  
“They knew. And they never judged us. They knew and they never told anyone. We never really appreciated that.” Bucky almost whispered.  
  
He felt Steve’s eyes on his face, went a little red. “For what it’s worth, they’d probably relentlessly mock us for being 90-year olds in twentysomething bodies.”  
  
“I can almost hear Falsworth with his mock radiocaster voice say: ‘The lovestory of a century. Because that’s how old they are.’ And then Jones would throw in something witty. I miss the guys, Buck.”  
  
“Me, too, Steve. Me too.” He felt Steve shiver beneath his hand when he reached out to pat his shoulder. “Are you cold?”  
  
Steve nodded almost imperceptibly. Then he looked up, straight into Bucky’s eyes and Bucky just couldn’t look away. “Let’s do it!” the blonde almost shouted into his face.  
  
“Do what?” Bucky asked, afraid, he’d missed something while he had been falling in Steve’s eyes.  
  
“Let’s go and see the world! We got enough money to travel the world over several times. No one to answer to. Just you and me. Let’s go see the world. It’s getting way too cold for my taste anyway, we could start somewhere warm. I’ve been here way too long, now that I am practically not allowed on the Avengers. Let’s pack our bags and just go.”  
“What about my PTSD? Slightly agoraphobic, remember?”  
  
“I’ll be there with you every step of the way. And I’ll take your hand and lead you out of any potentially threatening situations if you need me to.”  
  
“Oh Steve, I love how that sappy sentence turned into military slang right there in the middle. You are such a romantic. Sure know how to woe them.”  
  
“Very funny. But I’m serious. Let’s leave. We never belonged to DC anyway.”  
  
“Where do we go first?”  
  
“Brooklyn, get a homebase. A fridge to put up all the overpriced fridge magnets we buy in tourist traps. And when it gets too cold, we’ll travel west. Along the Historic Route 66 for a while. See the Grand Canyon. When the cold catches up to us, we keep on moving. You know men can get married these days in some states?”  
  
“Steven Grant Rogers, I am not going to marry you in Vegas if that’s what you’re thinking! In fact…”, Bucky’s voice trailed off. “I don’t know…I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how you go from being us to being in a relationship.”  
  
Steve nodded. “We will do what feels right. No pushing, nothing that feels wrong. If either one of us is not comfortable with something, we won’t do it. We will figure it out. We have made it through too many decades and defied too many odds to give up now. And if all we are ever going to be is roommates and best friends that openly secretly are in love with each other,that’s okay. But I can tell you one thing: we should never stop being us, especially when we are going to have a relationship.”  
  
Bucky’s eyes sparkled. “When do we leave?”  
  
“How fast can you pack your bags, Barnes?”  
  
“I wanna see palmtrees, Steve!”  
  
“Then you shall have palm trees.”  
  
“We gotta see if that Restaurant near Naples is still in business. You know which one I mean?”  
  
“Of course I do. And yes, we should. We have to see the Mona Lisa. And the Garden in Giverny.”  
  
“Beach holiday in Constanţa!”  
  
“Where is Constanţa?”  
  
“Romania. While we’re at it: visit Dracula’s castle.”  
  
“We have to see Berlin for real.”  
  
“See what London looks like these days.”  
  
“But first…”  
  
“Brooklyn. Coney Island.”

  


*

And that’s how Sam got a photo a few days later. A photo of Steve, his face slightly green, in front of the Cyclone. A few weeks later, Bucky standing on a rock in front of Powell Point, his arm stretched out looking ready to jump. Steve at the wheel of a vintage car somewhere along the Route 66. Bucky in front of the Fountains of Bellagio. Steve at the Chinese Theatre. Bucky, unshaven, looking like Bigfoot in Yosemite. Steve riding a cable car. The two of them gotten lei’d and holding hands in Hawaii. The further they went, the closer they seemed to get. The happier they looked. Sam couldn’t help to smile whenever he got a new photo. The two finally managed to unwrite the tragic pages and replace them with their own words.


End file.
